SOURCE: “A Democratic Society, 1794-1795,” in Benjamin Franklin Bache and the Philadelphia Aurora, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991, pp. 205-38.

[In the following essay, Tagg considers Bache's discussion of civic, social and domestic issues in his newspaper and how his activities in Democratic Societies influenced this content. Tagg argues that Bache saw the societies as another way to shape pubic opinion.]

If a law is obnoxious to any part of the country, let the citizens there petition for its repeal, expose its defects, or injustice through the medium of the press; let them change their representation, put into their legislature men whom they know will be active to procure its repeal.

(General Advertiser, July 26, 1794)

Bache's naive advocacy of closer relations with revolutionary France could not have struck a responsive chord even among those most infatuated with the French cause. But in 1794 and early 1795 Bache happened on issues that rescued him from the alienation inherent in an international vision too extreme to be taken seriously and too remote to promise resolution. The crisis with Great Britain in early 1794, and the threat of commercial retaliation against that nation by Congress, had opened the way.¹ As Federalists proclaimed the commercial necessity of peaceful relations with that country, Bache and his correspondents were awakened to the domestic root of this evil—a public debt that tied the fortunes of a few aristocratic creditors to the British commercial system and thereby strangled American independence as well as the ideal of democratic equality. Although Bache had affirmed his liberal advocacy of funding, banks, trade, and manufacturing earlier in the decade, he and most of his contributors saw American liberty compromised through the British commercial connection and the needs of a small creditor aristocracy. As one writer put it, “If to have a public debt is to produce the blessing of the influence and instrumentality of British policy, to little purpose has America contended; to little purpose have her patriots dyed the soil with their blood.”²

As another put it, national autonomy and identity were at stake.

When we were without a national debt, as was the case in the late revolution, we acted with vigour against an enemy; we resisted oppression and with effect; but now we have a debt, we are unmanned, pusillanimous and servile, unfit to maintain those rights which we acquired, and pliant to injuries and insults, that would once have given indignation and resistance to every American heart.

An old Oppositionist saw other long-term consequences of a public debt.

What means public credit? A readiness to get in debt, and what means a public debt? The means of causing a distinct interest from that of the whole community, and enabling government to adopt systems, and pursue measures, which they could not, nor dare not attempt without this pretext. Public credit means further, a yoke for posterity.³

Convinced that the public debt had subverted American liberty, Bache's writers began to look for new Hamiltonian subversions. A Republican-sponsored tax on public securities transactions, opposed by Hamilton as a violation of contract, was supported by the General Advertiser because it hit rich speculators, and because it avoided the need for more general excise taxes which undermined the honest industry of the mechanic class and of dignified labor as a whole. In like manner, paper money was identified as the handmaiden of credit and speculation. With early reports of the Yazoo land fraud in Georgia, land speculation was added to the list of potentially corrupting economic issues. And many correspondents began to condemn high public salaries for burdening honest industry and encouraging bribery, corruption, and patronage.⁴

But although economic issues became more prominent in Bache's newspaper in 1794, they were ancillary to, and a mere catalyst for the core of Bache's political focus. In 1794 that focus remained primarily civic. It involved Bache's half-conscious quest for a means to excite and release mankind's natural sense of justice, to articulate that natural perfection into effective public opinion, and to impose that public opinion in turn on the decisions of elected representatives. The issue that allowed that focus in 1794 was nominally economic—the excise on spirituous liquors. But the excise was only part of a much broader conflict involving emergent Democratic Societies, new suspicions about Hamiltonian and Federalist motives, and the Whiskey Rebellion.

Although admitting the extremist rhetoric of the 1790s, Republican fears of government tyranny, and Federalist fears of an unruly people, it might be argued that the essential character of the Democratic Societies excited less scrutiny among those living in that decade than it would later among modern historians. Historians have often worried over peripheral issues—the European versus the indigenous American origins of the societies, the class structure of the membership of the societies, and the position of the societies on the evolutionary tree of emergent political parties. We now know that the societies believed they were imitating the revolutionary societies of the American Revolution, and that they were prepared to call themselves the Sons of Liberty until Genet recommended the name Democratic Societies; but we also know that the societies identified with the Jacobin clubs of France and other radical democratic societies in England and Europe. Although we can identify Democratic Society members as the new men of the 1780s and 1790s—political outsiders and upstarts, ambitious merchants, and especially mechanics and artisans—we should also remember that these new men were not mere opportunists or people interested in promoting class advantage, but men determined to transform the process of political decision-making. And, while we may be curious about the societies as embryonic political parties, or as a “way-station” between “revolutionary and egalitarian party politics” as Sean Wilentz puts it, we should not analyze these societies solely by looking backward with our knowledge of party development. In recommending candidates for election and in promoting policies, the societies were not just modern parties in the making. They were, above all, struggling to discover in a radical and creative way, how to articulate representative democracy and popular sovereignty in the face of established political forces that stood to maintain deference, permanent social and economic class divisions, and a traditional, Burkean hierarchy of society.⁵

Although the German Republican Society of Philadelphia and the Democratic Society of Pennsylvania were both born in the spring of 1793, Bache seldom referred to the societies in that year, only reprinting Freneau's notice of the German Society and briefly reporting the formation of the Philadelphia Society he would eventually join.⁶ But upon joining the Society on January 2, 1794, he was immediately elected to its correspondence committee. As a member of this committee and others, he was involved in every significant club activity in 1794. He was selected to obtain publication of the club's January 9 statement of philosophy and purpose. On the club's behalf, he unsuccessfully tried to recruit David Rittenhouse to return as the Society's president. In March, he helped draft a letter to the French National Convention. A month later, with the aid of Leib and Du Ponceau, he composed and arranged for publication a statement on “The Present State of Our National Affairs,” which condemned neutrality, British depredations, and British influence in America, while calling on Americans to insist on complete indemnification, release of the western posts, and economic independence from Great Britain.

Meanwhile, Bache and his fellow members of the correspondence committee worked to encourage newly founded societies in Washington County, Pennsylvania, and in South Carolina, New York, Vermont, and New Jersey. In April Bache and this committee composed a circular letter accusing the British faction (which Bache seldom called the “Federalists”) of selling out American liberty, and another letter asking for national support in their effort to oppose the appointment of John Jay as envoy to England. During the summer of 1794, before the Whiskey crisis, Bache also served on three other committees: one to prepare an address to the public urging the selection of public servants responsive to the people; another to establish a suitable means to celebrate the 4th of July; and a third to look into the Presque Isle incident in western Pennsylvania.⁷

The only men in the Society of equal importance to Bache were Alexander James Dallas, Dr. Michael Leib, Dr. George Logan, and Peter Stephen Du Ponceau. All but Leib, who was born of German parents and maintained contact with the German community, could claim some trans-Atlantic ties; all were firm friends of France. Unfortunately, all were also part of a day-to-day, face-to-face world of political conversation and calculation whose candid discussions have been lost to us forever. Dallas, a Scot born in the West Indies, was most eminent among his contemporaries as Secretary of the Commonwealth. Although he had been a cautious public defender of Genet, he undoubtedly was more extreme as the political confidant and adviser to Pennsylvania's Jeffersonian political activists. After the death of Dr. James Hutchinson in the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, Dr. Michael Leib, a physician who had trained under Benjamin Rush and been involved with both the Philadelphia Dispensary and the Almshouse, had joined Dallas as the chief mover-and-shaker in Republican partisan politics in Philadelphia. A street politician well before modern politics emerged, Leib actively organized the mechanics and artisans of the Northern Liberties. Scattered references also suggest Leib was a frequent loiterer around Bache's printing shop, undoubtedly writing or inspiring many of the editorials that appeared in the General Advertiser and Aurora in the 1790s. Dr. George Logan, an old republican and agrarian advocate who had studied at the University of Edinburgh, surely closeted himself with Bache far less frequently, especially as the more commercial and mechanic-oriented Leib began to fall out with Logan after 1794. Peter Du Ponceau, another immigrant and francophile, was more reserved than the rest, but his knowledge of language and international law must have made him a valuable asset to Republican writers. Leib, Dallas, Logan, and Du Ponceau were leaders in a network of political advisors to whom Bache could turn for political ideas and material. Only John Beckeley and William Duane would exert equal political influence on Bache as the decade progressed. In the summer of 1794, Fenno satirized the “anarchic” activities of Bache and his colleagues in a poem entitled “The Trio”:

The leaders of the Demon frantic club,
Who Congress with their condine labels drub,
Are Doctors L[oga]n, L[ei]b and F[ranklin] B[ach]e,
These learned cacklers nightly take their stand,
With leathern bell, and goose-quill in their hand,
Lord, how of rapes on Liberty, they preach.(8)

But although his activities on behalf of the Democratic Society were extensive and important, Bache probably served the societies more through his editorial defense of their right to exist and their role in civic improvement. It was a task made necessary by Federalist attacks on the legitimacy of the societies, begun even before the Whiskey Rebellion. The central Federalist argument was that the clubs were private, secret organizations which usurped power from legitimate authority and from the people. Even John Adams, who admitted the political legitimacy of the clubs more than most, told his wife in 1794 that, “A man drawn between two horses is a neat image of a nation drawn between its government and self-created societies acting as corporations and combining together.”⁹ While Adams, unable to shake the traditionalist dialectic of rulers and ruled or his classical republican beliefs in a hierarchy of inevitable orders, did not understand the societies' quest for a means to articulate public opinion, the societies did give themselves the appearance of exclusivity. The Philadelphia Society initially required that no one could become a member unless the other members “concur in the Nomination and Vouch for his democratical principles.” And in March the Society decided to expel anyone who had “principles inimical to this Institution.”¹⁰ In practice, the societies were more open in their admissions and their activities than these resolutions suggest. Nevertheless, many Federalists chose not only to condemn the societies as illegitimate but to see in them a pro-French conspiracy as well. Some, like Washington, were never able to understand why the societies might be considered legitimate organs of opinion. As early as April, as the societies attacked England, Washington believed that “the first fruit of the Democratic Society begins more and more, to unfold itself.” Other Federalists, more advanced in partisan understanding, simply saw the societies as coterminous with the French faction.¹¹

Early editorials attempted to brush aside criticisms with mild sarcasm and ridicule. One correspondent suggested that if the clubs had been made up of “officers of government, speculators, stockholders, stock-jobbers, bank-directors, or British agents, their opinions would have weight.” Another added that the societies “must be a set of political infidels, who are so lacking in faith as to believe our government capable of doing wrong.” And a third sarcastically concluded, “The present state of human perfection must make it entirely superfluous to have societies to guard against encroachments upon the people's rights.”¹² But when Fenno's writers persistently charged, as one did in mid-April, that the societies were “aristocrats—a privileged order, not by law, or by the free consent of others, but by your own usurpation and intrigue,” Bache and his writers responded by asserting the right of individuals to meet, discuss, and offer opinions on political matters; by demanding the government's respect for the voice of the people; by pointing out that public servants were elected and therefore open to criticism and scrutiny; and by appealing to the concept of free speech and assembly.¹³

For the first half of 1794, riding the crest of the public opinion wave in favor of retaliation against Great Britain, Advertiser correspondents and others were largely able to fend off Federalist attacks. But the crisis surrounding the excise, the impending Whiskey Rebellion, and the executive administration's eager use of military force against the rebels forced the Democratic Societies into a defensive posture, and never allowed them to recover fully or become permanent vehicles of public opinion.

Early in the decade, during his cautious years, Bache had defended a whiskey excise in no uncertain terms. In 1791, when the excise bill finally passed Congress, Bache apparently identified himself first as a publisher of an “advertiser” which catered to merchants who preferred the excise as an alternative to burdensome external taxes. But Bache's spoken reasons for supporting the excise and condemning its protestors had little to do with self-interest. Although the Advertiser alluded to the debilitating effects of drink in general, Bache's primary thrust was to emphasize that the excise had been legislated by democratically elected representatives of the people.¹⁴

When the public meetings and protests of the whiskey excise began in mid-1791, Bache did not hesitate to lecture the protestors. He scolded the Germantown Society for promoting Domestic Manufactures and its president, George Logan, for their denunciation of the excise as a violation of natural rights and an obstacle to the growth of industry. Although his own correspondents took him to task on his arguments, Bache pointed to Congress's constitutional right to impose such a law, claimed the Germantown Society was trying to label the law “dangerous and arbitrary” while accusing Congress of “ignorance and precipitancy,” and hinted that the Society was trying to set itself above the Constitution.

Do these gentlemen live under, and enjoy the benefits of the federal constitution, and yet, do they claim rights which are expressly given up by the adoption of that Constitution? And while they enjoy the blessings of government, are they justifiable in refusing their support to the constitutional measures of their lawful representatives?¹⁵

Bache re-affirmed this position in reaction to the famous Brownsville protest meeting of July 27, 1791, in which state representative William Findley participated. “In a private citizen such conduct would be extremely blameable,” Bache began, “but it becomes unpardonable” when exercised by a representative of the people. As for the meeting as a whole,

To oppose the passing of a law, in its progress through the legislature, or even to make exertions to procure its repeal, when once passed, is the duty of every representative of the people, who is convinced that such a law would be injurious to the interests of his constituents; but the constitutional measures of lawful representatives, every citizen should lend a hand to support.¹⁶

For the next two months, as opposition to the excise divided between peaceful petitioning and violent protest, Bache and his correspondents broadened their criticism. They emphasized the constitutionality of the act but also argued that the excise was not inequitable or immoral, labeled the protestors as selfish men inspired by anti-federalist sentiments, and noted the immense expense incurred by the federal government in protecting the frontier.¹⁷

By early 1792 Bache was sounding virtually like a Federalist. Those who opposed a constitutional measure in a country as free as the United States were the “worst enemies to liberty,” he claimed. It was hard for him to understand how men could be so “wicked and foolish” as to oppose laws that their own elected representatives had framed. Two weeks later he added,

Liberty like any other good thing, is to be used with discretion. Cry huzzas, & down with government—is there any liberty in this? The few who govern the many often raise this cry, & possess themselves of the power of the multitude who join in it. But again, is this liberty, or the power of a few? In sober times, when the laws have no passions, the multitude really governs. The people, therefore, by supporting the laws, support liberty & equal right, which they already possess—by opposing the laws with force, they put all at risk. Are the opposers of the excise sons of liberty?¹⁸

Although he re-published from Freneau's National Gazette a series of “Sidney” letters which criticized the tax because it was indirect, inequitable, and burdensome to westerners who hardly considered whiskey a luxury, Bache did not abandon his first commitment to representative and majoritarian government. When President Washington privately condemned the second Pittsburgh protest meeting—which resolved not to comply with the excise until repeal was effected—as “subversive of good order … and of a nature dangerous to the very being of a government,” Bache was not far behind, declaring:

Is not every measure tending to obstruct the operation of a constitutional law passed by legal representatives blameable and illegal? If so, what can excuse the last [resolves] but one of the above resolves [the petition for repeal]? Does it appear the result of a dispassionate and full deliberation?¹⁹

Not fully appreciative of the federal government's inability to contend with western grievances over navigation of the Mississippi River, or the threat of Indian attacks, or the west's disgust with internal taxes that stretched back to American revolutionary ideology, Bache apparently remained unable to comprehend the social, economic, and political realities and needs of the west.

When violence erupted in the west in 1794 and re-awakened debate over the excise, Bache maintained his consistency in condemning it. The impetus for that violence had been a legal process issued on May 31 for the arrest of sixty western distillers, and their summons to Philadelphia for federal trial. In fact, the writs were a “bluff” contrived to “induce compliance with the law” because on June 6 a new law was signed allowing trial of tax evaders in local state courts. Although no westerners were carried off for federal trial in the east, the consequences were the same. After John Neville, the federal tax collector, accompanied U. S. Marshall David Lenox in the latter's quest to serve summonses, Neville's Bower Hill home was attacked on July 16 by an army of 500 fearful and paranoid anti-excise insurgents. An “unthinking, uncalculated, emotional rebellion” had begun. For a month the leaders of calmer, constitutional protest like Hugh Henry Brackenridge, William Findley, and Albert Gallatin were overwhelmed by the warlike enthusiasm of men like David Bradford and the Mingo Creek residents who, on July 23, advocated war on the east and the excise, and by the 7,000 largely poor and propertyless residents of the Pittsburgh area who met on Braddock's Field on August 1 in quest of some economic reform and relief. Not until the moderates regained some foothold at the Parkinson's Ferry meeting of August 14, did the rebellion—more renowned for its meetings than its fighting—begin to subside toward peace.²⁰

Responding to the Bower Hill incident, Bache lamented the use of violence to counteract the “will of the majority.” “If a law is obnoxious to any part of the country,” he contended, “let the citizens there petition for its repeal, expose its defects, or injustice through the medium of the press; let them change their representation, put into their legislature men whom they know will be active to procure its repeal.” Bache continued to ignore the fact that the excise protestors had in large measure attempted this very remedy, but his posturing also revealed that he had learned some lessons about political persuasion from the Genet affair, as he lectured the public further, demanding that the law be maintained as the wishes of the majority if legitimate protest failed. Violence was reversion to “anarchy and barbarism,” he added, especially when America's republican government provided a system for correcting abuses.²¹

Yet perhaps the long debate over the excise between 1791 and 1794—a debate set by Thomas Slaughter within the “Country” and “Court” ideological paradigm of “liberty” versus “order”—made some impact on Bache. Perhaps the passage of a Revenue Act in June, 1794—an act that through its taxes on snuff, sugar, and carriages badly affected lesser merchants like Thomas Leiper, who would later become one of Bache's political allies—persuaded Bache of the ill economic and political effects of an excise. And perhaps the influence of George Logan, who consistently indicted indirect taxes from an extreme opposition to interferences with personal liberty, had some effect upon him.²² In any case, in the same editorial in which Bache condemned violence, he began to attack the heavy-handed application of the excise by the federal administration. “An excise was odious in many parts of the Union,” he asserted, “and the executive should have endeavoured to have consiliated [sic] the minds of the people to its execution, and not attempted to enforce it by rigorous means; we hope, this plan will in future be pursued, as severe measures can but irritate.” A few days later, Bache added that the executive had seduced westerners into believing the law was not obnoxious by not executing it early but then executing it severely in 1794.²³ In early August, realizing that the excise issue was not dead, Bache and his contributors began to tie the excise to the evils of the Hamiltonian funding system and the introduction of British forms of taxation. In that context, it had increased the executive power in the Treasury and the usurpation of legislative authority, tied a wealthy plutocracy to the administration, shifted the tax burden to the poor, and caused the British to take advantage of the turmoil to encourage the western rebellion.²⁴

The issue of pacification of the whiskey rebels was a greater problem for the General Advertiser than analysis of the excise protest. Although Washington, fearing anarchy, committed himself to err on the side of order from the outset, and although Hamilton sought armed reprisals against the protestors early on, Governor Mifflin argued against any precipitous military response. Amidst uncertainty, Secretary of State Edmund Randolph obtained what appeared to be a stay of execution for the rebellion by getting the President to agree to send a peace commission to the west in early August. But Washington was ambivalent, and Hamilton worked to undermine negotiations, claiming the rioters were trying to overthrow the government. Although Gallatin, Brackenridge, and Findley bent every effort to convince the protestors to accept the peace commission's terms, and although a majority of protestors signed an oath of loyalty, Washington and Hamilton proceeded with their military response, raising a 12,950 man army divided neatly into gentleman volunteers and poorly clad militiamen. With Hamilton as the “unofficial civilian head” of the expedition, the army marched west in October, rounded up a few pathetic captives in November (the main body of 2,000 “disloyal” protestors led by the bellicose David Bradford had headed into the wilderness), and had completed its work by the end of November. The escape of the 2,000, the Battle of Fallen Timbers (1794), the Treaty of Grenville with the Indians (1795), the Pinckney Treaty (1795) which opened the Mississippi River, and the Jay Treaty were the events behind the real “pacification” of the west, while the rebellion contributed simply “to widening the breach between self-styled friends of liberty and friends of order, and to the birth of the Republican and Federalist parties in the years following 1794.”²⁵

By mid-August, driven into a difficult political circumstance by western violence, almost all General Advertiser correspondents agreed that some means other than force should be employed in the west. One caustically recommended that “stockholders, bank-directors, speculators and revenue officers,” or, in other words, those who benefited from the revenue acts, could put down the insurrection themselves if they desired force. In that case, he added, “the poor but industrious citizen will not be obliged to spill the blood of his fellow-citizens before conciliatory means are tried, to gratify certain resentments, and expose himself to the loss of life or of limb to supporting a funding order.” Another pleaded to “not abandon the endeavor to reclaim and reform them [the rebels], by reason and good offices.”²⁶

Privy only to fragmentary reports, Bache vacillated in his reportage and commentary on problems in the west. On August 21, he sadly reported that the rebellion had spread beyond the excise to the issue of opening the Mississippi and even to independence of the west from the Atlantic states. He reversed this dismal picture on September 5 with an exaggerated report on an amnesty agreement being reached between the federal commissioners and representatives of the Parkinson's Ferry conclave. In the days that followed, perhaps employing his usual tactic of exaggerating both the gravity and the degree of resolution of a problem in order to embarrass the government if it failed, he congratulated the government on its successful and pacific termination of rebellion.²⁷ But when Bache learned that not all of the insurgents had capitulated, that some townships and counties in the west remained in turmoil, he was genuinely hostile toward the advocates of violent protest rather than disappointed in the government.

Should the sense of the counties after this solemn trial, be in favour of violent opposition to the laws, no citizen who values the blessings that flow from government will refuse his most avid aid in suppressing so dangerous and despotic an attempt of a minority to rule, and we shall at a blow crush the hydra of anarchy and by a decisive line of conduct in this first instance destroy the germ of any future conspiracy against the constitution and laws.²⁸

Although he wished that peaceful means had succeeded, Bache applauded Mifflin's promise to take stern action and claimed that the federal government was right in deciding to put the rebellion down in the autumn, before winter allowed time for it to spread.²⁹

Ambivalence continued as the debate shifted to discussion of the militia. Many called for a spirited response from militia men, and applauded those who turned out for service. It was even recommended that the militia be used further to drive the British from the Northwest posts.³⁰ But questions were also asked about the military solution: would the “well-born” and rich fight, would the militia men be able to vote in the election and thereby voice their opposition to the excise, should all men be called up for service, would the low pay for the militia be raised, should eighteen-year-old boys ineligible to vote be pressed into service, and were the militia paraded out to suggest political support for the excise that never existed in their ranks?³¹ Bache was worried that, by his estimate, it would cost 900,000 dollars to put the rebellion down in two months.³² He and his correspondents were further concerned that Mifflin had authorized the mayor of Philadelphia to call out a five-hundred-man militia, leaving the city unprotected while the other militia companies were away. Bache claimed Mifflin had no authority to issue such an order, and other writers supported Bache's contention that Mifflin's move was politically motivated to intimidate those opposing the excise.³³

By October, Bache's confusion and ambivalence regarding the crisis in general, his coy early support for suppressing the whiskey rebels, and his cat-and-mouse game with public opinion gave way to a more one-sided anti-administration stand. On October 3 he claimed that western fear of the militia had been the main reason for the federal government's success over the insurgents. But most criticisms avoided the pitfalls of the issue as to whether a show of military might was useful or proper. Instead, the General Advertiser turned on Washington, criticizing the commander-in-chief for accompanying the army to its staging area at Carlisle. The President had to be with Congress when it was sitting, Bache and others argued, and if he was not, he could not sign or veto legislation within ten days of its passage. Washington, growing less amused every day with Bache's style of attack, informed Randolph that he would return to Philadelphia before Congress met, “but not because of the impertinence of Mr. Bache.”³⁴

With Washington's return, Bache turned his attack against Hamilton for “usurping the station of the god of war and directing the avenging thunder of the nation.” This was just the beginning of a prolonged editorial attack on Hamilton, the most severe Bache had launched against Hamilton to that time, which now identified the Secretary of the Treasury as a conspirator and potential despot. Hamilton was charged with harboring private and devious motives in joining the army. He had conspired to put opposers of his child, the excise, in a bad light and had stymied any opposition to the government or administration policies. Through a “deep laid scheme,” Hamilton was trying to put himself at the head of all government. In Bache's mind, there was no justification for Hamilton's usurpation of War Department responsibilities or for his abandonment of his fiscal duties in the Treasury Department, although “this absence may have the good effect of convincing those not already convinced that his labours in the financial career can be dispensed with, and that money bills can be originated without his instrumentality.”³⁵

Federalists were incensed. Washington, always sensitive to criticism, informed Hamilton on November 5 that Bache had “opened his batteries upon your motives for remaining with the Army.” Fenno's Gazette, meanwhile, charged Bache with attacking Hamilton “behind his back,” with erroneously calling the excise Hamilton's child when it was really the child of Congress, with abusively attacking a constitutional law, and with deceiving credulous Americans for political reasons. A correspondent complained on November 10,

It is plain that nothing can satisfy these men with the Secretary but the evacuation of his office. That some little financier may have a chance to occupy it himself and fill the department with his miserable dependants [sic].

Webster's Minerva defended the Secretary as well, claiming that Hamilton was in the west merely to learn how best to handle the public revenue and serve the public interest.³⁶

After the rebellion reached its less than glorious conclusion, Bache and his contributors discovered another political issue to add to their well justified suspicions about Hamilton's character and motives. This involved the Pennsylvania legislature's successful campaign in late 1794 and early 1795 to exclude from the state Senate and House legitimately elected legislators from the four western counties in rebellion. Advertiser writers angrily argued that party politics had motivated the exclusion, and that the elections had been conducted properly and peacefully. Bache believed the exclusion was unconstitutional and worried that the majority in the legislature could henceforward abolish the minority whenever it liked. He was obviously pleased when new elections in the west resulted in the re-election of all but one of the previously unseated representatives (that one declining to run for office again).³⁷

But all contentions were finally subsumed under the big issue—the relationship of the Democratic Societies to the Whiskey Rebellion. At every opportunity during the insurrection crisis, Bache's Democratic Society tried to protect itself from the charge that the clubs supported rebellion and opposed the Constitution, the government, and the laws. On July 3, with Bache in the chair pro tem., the Philadelphia group took up an extensive discussion of the excise and taxes in general. Later that month, the Society issued a policy statement on the excise. The excise was “oppressive & hostile to the liberties of this country,” and it created a “nursery of vice and sycophancy,” they concluded. Yet, the Society was determined to continue only “legal opposition” to the excise. The Society resolved that they “highly disapprove of every opposition to them [the laws], not warranted by that frame of Government, which has received the sanction of the People of the United States.” In early September, with Bache again in the chair, the club took up a letter from Philadelphian Israel Israel to the Democratic Society of Washington County which lamented the violence occurring in the west, attacked the excise, and called for a constitutional remedy to the problem.³⁸

The crucial meeting of the Democratic Society, the meeting at which the excise and the Whiskey Rebellion issues came to a head, was held on September 11. Three resolutions were proposed. The first two, calling for approval of Mifflin's pacification plan and agreeing to support the use of force if reason proved “inadequate,” passed easily. But the third resolution tore the Society apart. It stated that the rebels' refusal to accept a peaceful solution “augurs an enmity to the genuine principles of freedom, and that such an outrage upon order and democracy, will merit the proscription of every friend to equal liberty, as it will exhibit a rank aristocratic feature, at war with every principle of just and national government.” In an initial vote, President Blair McClenachan and twenty-eight others voted against the resolution but were defeated by one vote. Angered at the manner in which this resolution criticized their western colleagues and at their apparent loss, McClenachan and his supporters walked out. With the possibility of the Society's disintegrating, Bache took the chair and the debate continued. In the end, it was agreed that the third resolution was too strong; only the first two resolutions were approved and published.³⁹

Bache's role was revealing. While the Whiskey Rebellion was not, as Washington contended, directly caused by the Democratic Societies, many westerners involved in the rebellion were members of the western societies. McClenachan and his supporters, in passionately attacking a strongly worded resolution that condemned their western brethren's use of violence, clearly empathized with the western insurrection in a way that Bache did not. In the Society and in the General Advertiser Bache firmly condemned the excise but never defended unconstitutional means to eliminate it.

As the heat surrounding the Societies intensified in the late summer and fall, Bache's correspondents pointed out how the Democratic Society opposed the excise riot, how they opposed both anarchy and aristocracy, and how they boldly spoke out against the rioters instead of remaining silent.⁴⁰ Bache angrily charged that the insurrection was being made a “tool” to attack the societies, and claimed Hamilton was leading that attack. Hamilton was determined to erect an “artificial aristocracy,” Bache argued, but would fail in trying to persuade the people “that they have not a right to assemble peaceably, discuss and give their opinion of public men and measures.” Several days later, before Washington or anyone else in the administration had publicly attacked the societies, Bache added,

Fain would our aristocrats discredit every establishment capable of keeping the people awake to their interests and throw light on the conduct of their servants; fain would they envelope the proceedings of government in impenetrable and mysterious secrecy, the people knew their rights and will assert them.⁴¹

Bache's democratic arguments were in vain. Although Hamilton privately admitted that there was no direct link between the societies and the rebellion, most Federalists, truly terrified by the rebellion, sought some means of establishing that link. They found a vigorous ally in the President. Unable to perceive any legitimacy in political debate external to the established offices of government, Washington had attacked the societies privately in early August and publicly in his message to Congress on November 19. In an address written by the sycophantic Edmund Randolph, the President charged “certain self-created societies” for assuming a “tone of condemnation” of the excise, and hinted at the societies' culpability in the insurrection. Federalists in the Senate rejoiced and moved to commend the President. Federalists outside Congress believed a serious threat to government and liberty had been averted. Most probably agreed with Noah Webster that the Democratic Societies had usurped the prerogative of the people's legitimately elected representatives to act and had thereby exercised tyranny over the majority. “They are a faction organized,” declared Webster, “a civil army, officered, trained and disciplined, like the legions of Julius Caesar, and ready at the call of their leaders, to rally and prostrate the government of their country.” In the House, Madison, who wrongly predicted that Washington had committed “the greatest error of his political life” in his attack on the societies, defeated moves to condemn the societies.⁴²

The societies did not die, but they did fade away. By early 1795, the Democratic Society of Pennsylvania had already become inactive.⁴³ Until the spring of 1795, Bache desperately tried to vindicate and revive the Society. Enlisting even more spirit and determination than in his defense of Genet a year earlier, Bache claimed that “no sentiment or opinion has been expressed by the Society, that has not been uttered by a respectable minority in the Federal House of Representatives.” The rebellion was once even predicted on the floor of Congress as a probable result of the excise, he added, a prophecy the Democratic Society had never been so bold as to make.⁴⁴ Meanwhile, Bache headed a Society committee established to draft a letter to the public. In that letter, the Society denied that club members were anarchists, opponents of the Constitution, or usurpers of the government's powers. But there was the necessity, they went on, to watch the government and to protect the right of free thought, speech, and expression. Although a plot had been put in motion to use the insurrection to destroy the societies, the letter concluded, the Society and its members had been conspicuous in opposing the insurgents. Bache was then appointed to arrange publication of the address, which appeared in his paper four days later.⁴⁵

After the new year began, it became clear that Fenno and the Federalist propagandists would hammer away at the Democratic Society whenever it raised its head. Fenno and Webster eagerly told Americans how the French, suffering from the pressure and violence resulting from the activities of popular societies, had abolished them. Although the Aurora quibbled over the technical nature of the French decree, claimed a Gazette writer, the fact was that the French had banned all correspondence between self-created clubs. Bache maintained that the French decree could be blamed on the violence between contending factions. But although the Aurora first attempted to claim that the clubs had not been abolished, Bache finally had to admit that they had been outlawed. He weakly justified the abolition of the societies under revolutionary conditions but defended them in a “settled” country like the United States, where they were necessary to protect the right of free speech and petition.⁴⁶

Equally devastating was the attack on the societies from Edmund Randolph, writing over the pseudonym of “Germanicus.” A political chameleon devoted to Washington, Randolph was generally torn between not antagonizing others yet maintaining some semblance of independent moral choice. Perhaps he felt he had found the opportunity to satisfy all of these impulses in being the first to recommend to the President an attack on the Democratic Societies and by then defending that action in the press himself. The societies had denounced constitutional laws, “Germanicus” claimed, and had not been sanctioned by the people. They were like a meteor, he argued, “irregular in their course and dangerous in their approach.” Perhaps because “Germanicus” at first assumed a moderate, almost impartial tone—even once claiming that the Society of Cincinnati would also have to defend itself from the “self-created” charge—and perhaps because Bache anticipated a different conclusion to “Germanicus”'s argument, Bache began to print the series in his newspaper. After the second letter, however, Bache claimed that he had been deceived; he thought that a reader had requested the publication of those two letters, whereas it had been “Germanicus” himself. Henceforward, Bache warned in a face-saving gesture, “Germanicus” would have to send his letters to the Aurora the same day they were sent to other papers.⁴⁷ Although Randolph's venture did not please Federalists, who saw his defense as too weak and vacillating, he was accused in the Aurora of deception through obloquy, feigned impartiality, falsely reporting the debate on the President's speech, and of offering vague, yet threatening, censures of society activities. Most concluded that “Germanicus” was trying to intimidate the people by implying that individuals and groups could not express their opinions on the laws.⁴⁸

Pressured by Fenno and “Germanicus,” Bache found himself defending the societies on many fronts, with the typical failures and frustrations he had experienced in the Genet affair. He accused Fenno of lying and trying to intimidate the people, and denied again that Genet had founded the Philadelphia society. He and his correspondents compared the Societies to the pro-administration Elizabethtown (N. J.) Society and the Tammany Society of New York. When Fenno wryly noted that “self-created Societies, to defend, uphold, and support, what the people have created, must be diabolical” while those “formed to undermine and destroy” were legitimate, a thin-skinned Bache began to call Fenno the “Witch of Endor,” and turned on Webster for no longer printing resolves of the New York Democratic Society in the Minerva.⁴⁹

Benjamin Bache probably found the Democratic Societies the best potential vehicles for translating the collective interest of society and fulfilling and maintaining the democratic revolution in America. He had learned in 1793 that mere revolutionary zeal and enthusiasm for the sisterhood of emergent republics were insufficient in establishing a democratic foundation. The failure of the Democratic Societies, therefore, eliminated an important public source for shaping that opinion and threw political education back into the arena of the press. But even before this failure, while preoccupied with the Democratic Societies and various public issues, Bache did not fail to expand the partisan role of his newspaper. As early as 1794, James Monroe, whose ideological views and sympathies for France were very similar to those of Bache, declared that Bache's paper was “the lightest and … best political paper” in Philadelphia.⁵⁰

Having begun to draw increased attention from Federalist publicists like Fenno, Webster, and William Cobbett in 1794, Bache found himself actively engaged in promoting Republicans, attacking prominent Federalists, and trying to discredit his journalistic opponents. In one way, the task involved only rhetorical volleys. He and his writers blasted Congressman Samuel Dexter, for example, for allegedly declaring that “republicanism was anything and nothing,” and for claiming that the President was paramount to the people, while other New England congressmen drew fire for their long-winded speeches, anti-republican sentiments, and arrogant sectionalism.⁵¹

But Bache did not achieve his partisan fame or infamy attacking easy New England Federalist targets. He did that by attacking George Washington. No less a political barometer than John Adams observed as early as January 1794: “Bache's paper, which is nearly as bad as Freneau's, begins to join in concert with it to maul the President for his drawing rooms, levees, declining to accept of invitations to dinners and tea parties, his birthday odes, visits, compliments, & etc.”⁵² Beginning with the President's birthday in February, Bache began to preview the kind of attack that would become standard in the next few years. Everything depended on depersonalizing the presidency, dissociating the celebrity of a person from the authority of an office that threatened representative republicanism. A correspondent who opposed the monarchical farce of celebrating the President's birthday put it clearly:

If the birth day of the President is to be commemorated, that day ought to be chosen, that auspicious day, when nine States ratified the Constitution, and gave birth to the President, and every other branch of our government. The celebration of any other would be the celebration of an individual and not that of the first officer of our government.

In 1795, Washington's birthday again elicited ridicule of “monarchical fashions,” with comparisons made between celebrating Washington's and the King of England's birthday.⁵³

Yet there was a sham quality to these early birthday attacks, for Bache, for unexplained reasons, attempted a bizarre and silly pose of personal impartiality. Alongside attacks, Bache published accounts of public celebrations of the President's birthday, and in 1794 commented that these celebrations “evince that encreasing years have added to the general sentiment of respect and veneration in the minds of our citizens, for the father of his country and the friend of man.”⁵⁴ In 1795, Bache astounded everyone by acting as manager of the birthday ball given by the City Dancing Assembly in honor of Washington. Whether youthful uncertainty or some strange vanity allowed him to participate is not clear. In a rare light mood, Fisher Ames ridiculed the scene.

At the birthday ball, Ben. F. Bache acted as manager. Yet his paper teems with daily abuse of courtly sycophancy. The poor creature should not be brought into the danger of suffering by contact with courts.⁵⁵

For once, Ames had a right to be cynical. On a more trivial level, Bache's correspondents attacked the playing of the President's march at the theater, and the President's habit of using the back door of the theater to reach his box, as examples of anti-republican behavior.⁵⁶ At a more serious level, writers worried that Washington's “infallibility” was being manipulated and employed in defense of Federalist measures. “Opinion has so far consecrated the President,” remarked one, “as to make it hazardous to say that he can do wrong. Several acts of his have been incompatible with the spirit of free government and yet these acts have been regarded as right.”⁵⁷ When a Minerva writer suggested giving the executive more discretionary powers during the British crisis of 1794, Bache quickly charged the Minerva with proposing “a visual king in our President.” And when “An Unfeigned Democrat” accused Bache of protecting the Democratic Societies while allowing abuse of the President to fill his pages, Bache played the sophist, admitting the Advertiser contained “censure” of the President but claiming it would be arrogant on his part to decide for the people what was true or false in these arguments.⁵⁸

The vast increase in shrill partisan rhetoric in the press in 1794 indicated the new value of elections. In late summer, 1794, the Advertiser tried to lay out what was at stake in the coming Congressional election. The best exposition was by “Franklin,” who claimed that the present representatives should be turned out of office because they had faced British depredations with “a meekness that seemed to give birth to a question of the purity of the motives which led to such submission.” The allusion was to incumbent Congressman Thomas Fitzsimons and his commercial interests. On the home front, “Franklin” continued, “intestine divisions” leading to “the sword of civil war” had emerged from an “odious excise system.” There was a “defect” in the government, he charged, one that flowed from “congressional stockholders marshalled in an impenetrable phalanx of opposition whenever their property is to contribute towards the general good.” He concluded with a rhetorical question answered in the old Country-Oppositionist mode:

Whence are all the clamours and disquietudes among the citizens? They arise from a funding system, founded upon injustice, engendered in corruption, the off-spring of the blood of our patriots, who have been spurned from the claims upon this country to make way for iniquity and speculation. … Let the men of your choice be the friends of justice, the enemies of inequality, the patrons of the rights of man, and the lovers of freedom, and America will become a land of promise where tranquility and contentment shall inhabit.

A month later, worrying that the people remained “unmindful” of the importance of the approaching election, Bache asked the public to scrutinize their representatives and “determine whether they have or have not acted as good and faithful servants; whether their votes on important questions have been blessed by their own interest.” For both “Franklin” and Bache, elections had become a better means of altering the measures of government than trying to effect a sea-change of political sentiment throughout the nation.⁵⁹

In early October, the campaign became specific as Bache moved to arouse support for John Swanwick, a liberal merchant, against the Federalist incumbent, Thomas Fitzsimmons. An opponent of both the whiskey excise and the Revenue Act of 1794, a supporter of the Democratic Societies, and a figure close to the German and mechanic elements in and around Philadelphia, Swanwick was a “pompous, vain little man” who nevertheless represented the new liberal ethic of free trade and the development of American industry.⁶⁰ Fenno, unaware of the approaching death of deference politics, ridiculed the Swanwick candidacy, publishing a long satirical account of a strategy meeting at Bache's printing shop. Paraphrasing the Democratic Society to the effect that “any man may run for any office he pleases” in a republic, the author concluded that Swanwick, being just any man, had a perfect right to run.⁶¹

Bache, meanwhile, seemed more concerned with strategy than answering Fenno. Facing a new district election law which seemed to necessitate having his man brought to broad public attention at the head of a ticket, Bache called upon the public to attend a nominating meeting where tickets would be drawn up. Still wistfully attached to some vague hope that a collective democratic osmosis would result in the public interest and morality being served without the promotion of candidates, Bache “regretted” the need for political tickets. On the more practical level, he worriedly apologized for the early hour of the meeting, since mechanics would find it difficult to attend. Bache's worries were confirmed. The mechanics arrived too late, and the meeting, designed as a Federalist nominating meeting in the first place and chaired by Charles Biddle, nominated Fitzsimmons.⁶² Unnecessarily anxious over the outcome, Bache raised the issue of election tampering before the results were known. On November 1, the Advertiser reported that a person entrusted with returning the ballots of a militia company serving in the west had burned those ballots upon returning to Philadelphia rather than submit them. The accuracy of the report was never verified. Bache's correspondents claimed that thirty-six unanimous votes for Swanwick were thereby destroyed and lost. On November 6, however, Bache only seemed certain that the original ballots had not been returned. Swanwick's election, with 1,142 to 894 votes, ended the whole controversy.⁶³

For the first time, the General Advertiser displayed intense interest in elections in other states as well—especially in Massachusetts, where Fisher Ames and Samuel Dexter seemed vulnerable—and wherever Federalists faced defeat. Although Bache cried fraud over Ames's victory over Jarvis, he was pleased that Dexter's defeat “seems to indicate that ‘Republicanism means something’ even in the Eastern states.”⁶⁴ And by early 1795 Bache looked forward to the new political environment, laughing at what he obviously saw as an end to Federalist control at the national level.

It is a melancholy prospect and sad reflection that the Jacobins of America are thought so well of by the people as to be delegated to Congress. New York and Philadelphia have turned out their old and tried servants, the faithful supporters of federalism and every ministerial measure, and have placed in their room two horrid Democrats! And to add to the bitterness of our distress the Secretary of the Treasury has resigned!! What will become of the United States! … What will now become of the darling brats, that we have been nursing with so much care and tenderness, the excise and funding systems, now their parent has abandoned them to other hands! Horrid thought! … Ungrateful, degenerate Americans, is it thus you reward your servants for serving themselves and their friends first!

Two months later, Bache happily announced that Republicans would be in a “decided Majority” at the opening of the Fourth Congress.⁶⁵

Through the 1794 partisan thicket of personal attacks and elections, Bache fashioned a new partisan rhetoric, defined party and faction, tried to define the Federalists, and developed tactics for countering his press opponents. Shallow allegory and unpolished satire were commonly used in these short editorials rather than extended analysis. In 1794, Bache suggested that since the terms “federal” and “anti-federal” were “worn-out,” the Federalists were having a contest to find a replacement for these terms. The winning epithets, Bache argued,

shall be rewarded with ten bank shares, and a contract to build a frigate. If the epithet designed to stigmatize the Republicans, could possibly be compounded of an allusion to French influence, it would be both sweet and politic. … Any veil which will hide ‘a multitude of sins,’ will suit the cidevant federals, alias, aristocrats. Enquire of Mr. Alexander Lovetitle, in Aristocracy Street, at the corner just as you are turning in to Monarchy alley.

N. B. Secrecy may be depended on and payment to satisfaction, for the need is great.⁶⁶

In a similar vein, Bache published “A Specimen of a New Dictionary” with words “Adapted to the existing circumstances.” Among the definitions were:

Opposition—Jacobins

A treaty—a solemn engagement between two sovereign princes, never to be broken, except when convenient to either party.

Liberty of the press—The liberty of praising the administration, and libelling their opponents.⁶⁷

Satire and allegory suggested an appropriate quality to the partisan debate, appropriate in that neither Bache nor many others admitted their opponents' legitimacy. But although these clumsy satires lacked the aural clarity of Paine's rhetoric, satire was a bridge to the modern partisan world, with its non-deferential posturing and its strong suggestion of the absurdity of the opposition's point of view.

Bache's early partisan attacks were usually more blunt than subtle. In 1794, for example, the Advertiser tried to dismiss the Federalists as a faction. One writer distinguished between “party” and “faction,” claiming the former applied to honest differences of opinion, as in the ratification fight over the Constitution, while the latter rested on “selfish passions and exclusive interests” and was most likely to be found in the executive department of governments, especially in the treasury branch, where corruption, graft, or interest encouraged sycophancy. In May the Federalists were summarized as a “paper junto” that increased taxes, manipulated currency, and excluded the vast majority of the people from political power. According to Bache, this editorial unveiled “the designs of a paper combination, and exposes to view the alarming situation to which an unsuspecting and honest people have been brought.” A month later Bache only hoped that the 1794 election would destroy the “faction,” adding that, “if their works are suffered to live after them, they will stand as the ruins of a monument reminding us of their perfidious designs and a proof of the danger of supineness in the people.”⁶⁸

As Bache's attacks on the administration decreased in the aftermath of the whiskey crisis, Noah Webster hoped Bache had begun to realize that the administration was not corrupt and evil.⁶⁹ It was a futile hope. “Benedict Arnold” charged the Federalists with trying to convert the Constitution into a “nose of wax,” and stifling legitimate opposition. Another writer, labeling the Federalists “Johnny's Club” after John Fenno, said of Federalist principles:

Their leading maxim appear to be 1. No limitation of power, if it can be kept in proper hands, viz. their own. 2. The most disciplined and implicit subjection to their leaders. 3. The varaciousness [sic] of canibals [sic] to devour all opposers. 4. Much reward to their faithful followers. They talk much of money being the oil of the political machine, they go so far as to maintain that it should if possible be all oil,—a mere ocean of oil,—and their principal officer like a tallow chandler, constantly employed in dipping in the whole club, till every part is kept always dripping with the fat of the land.⁷⁰

Alexander Hamilton's resignation from the Treasury was occasion for special comment. When Fenno applauded the Secretary's God-like achievements, Bache found the panegyric “too much for the swallow of even the meanest toad-eater of administration.” Instead of Hamilton's contributing to America's future, Bache added, “America will long regret, that his works live after him.” Had the natural advantages of the country, the Constitution, the President, and Congress done nothing to aid the country? he queried.⁷¹ In March, another writer summarized Hamilton's motives and accomplishments at length. Hamilton had not resigned his post out of patriotism, the author claimed, but because his salary of thirty-five hundred dollars was insufficient. During his public career, he went on, Hamilton had proposed a life term for the presidency and an unlimited term of office for senators, subject only to good behavior. He had sponsored funding and the excise and had said that “a public debt is a public blessing.” He had written the proclamation of neutrality and had authored the “Pacificus” letters, which encouraged the United States to break her faith with France. Bache's correspondent found little comfort in the prospect that Hamilton might be used for consultation by the administration in the future.⁷²

While Hamilton uniformly avoided public or private response to Bache's charges, John Fenno was obliged to be Hamilton's partisan surrogate in public debate with Bache. Their newspaper exchanges were usually as unenlightening as they were frequent. After Fenno labeled the Republicans “rabble” in early 1794, an Advertiser writer accused Fenno of “prostitution” and “abject servility to governmental men.” Another, enraged by Fenno's castigation of the Republicans as an “incendiary faction,” defined Fenno's faction in blunt terms as made up of

Men bred in the schools of Britain and educated in the vile acts of sycophantic adulation; Speculators not worth one stiver previous to the funding system though now worth their tens of thousands, and lastly, men who, though born in America rambled all over Europe under pretence of education, until the die was cast and American independence acknowledged by Britain; when over they came piping hot patriots, full of fight; claimed their estates and got into Congress as a reward for not opposing their good friends the British; voted for the funding system to pay themselves for all those great services, and now, like a beggar on horseback, would willingly ride the people to the Devil.⁷³

Having begun at a low level of accusation, Fenno and Bache seldom elevated the debate. In the spring of 1794 each accused the other of publishing a newspaper as abusive as the Brussel's Gazette, Bache accusing Fenno of sharing with that newspaper a contempt for the common man or what Burke had called the “swinish multitude.” Petulant, Bache promised that he would no longer freely advertise the Gazette of the United States by reprinting any of Fenno's editorials or by replying to Fenno's abuse.⁷⁴

Fenno's tactics varied. Early on, Bache was accused of having his editorials written and approved by the Democratic Society, of slandering office holders and a majority of Congress, and of lying, emitting “filth,” and spreading “discord.” Also, Fenno never doubted and emphatically argued that Bache was in the pay of a foreign nation.⁷⁵ When Bache added the name Aurora, and its symbol, to his masthead in late 1794, a Gazette writer said he first believed the rays of the Aurora's half-risen sun were “emblematic of the vapour which continually arose in that paper.” Instead of this emblem, he declared,

I should have advised him to employ some eminent artist to purtray [sic] in type metal a full meeting of a certain club, and the features of a few might be delineated;—the Editor himself, might be introduced in the attitude of making a motion, or in the more vehement action of declamation, one hand might have grasped the Snakes of Envy carefully enfolded in the General Advertiser, and the other the torch of discord.⁷⁶

Bache ascribed Fenno's bitterness to the military successes of France over the “set of reptiles” supported by the Gazette. Fenno was further described as an apologist for funding and speculation, an opponent of free speech and republicanism, a preacher of passive obedience to the government, a sycophant in the pay of the Federalists and the British, a supporter of titles and nobility, and a sponsor of limited monarchy. A typical editorial, commenting on Fenno's frequent use of poetical satire, stated that, “When our Senate becomes a House of Lords, and our President a King, we shall know where to look for a Laureat well practised in the art of court versification.”⁷⁷

A greater danger loomed in the figure of William Cobbett. An idiosyncratic man, Cobbett was both a compulsive writer of extraordinary volume, talent, and wit, and a combative person who apparently was unable to define his life except in conflict. Cobbett's better days were ahead of him, as a friend of the nineteenth-century English husbandman, defending a nostalgic agrarianism that contrasted with the Jeffersonian vision of a liberated yeomanry. But in 1792, arriving in America as an exile from England with a new wife, Cobbett struggled on in discomforting obscurity, teaching English to French immigrants and growing more and more opposed to the French Revolution. A Burkean through and through, Cobbett made no pretence about American republicanism. He boldly flaunted his pro-British, anti-French, and anti-republican opinions. In 1794, he launched a severe attack on the liberal ideas of his fellow-countryman, Joseph Priestley, in Observations on Priestley's Emigration, from which he won unexpected celebrity and success. He followed this in 1795 with a two-part work appropriately entitled A Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats, a work that condemned the French, ridiculed the Democratic Societies for encouraging subversion of the government, and argued for closer ties between England and the United States. Cobbett even made space to belittle Bache.

Many have been the conjectures on the reason of this Print assuming the name of Aurora. The Editor after having, like a second Phaeton, driven the blazing car of democratic fury, till it was within an inch of burning us all up to cinders, has assumed the gentle gait and modest veil of the Goddess of the morning: ‘A right chip of the Old Block;’ as poor Richard says. Some think, that having seen the Sun of all his hopes and expectations set, in the west, he thought it was high time to rise upon us from the east. But, this is not the reason; the thing is an imitation of a French paper, conducted by ‘Le veritable pere du chien.’⁷⁸

Fearless and visceral, like a dog trained for combat, Cobbett began his reckless, unapologetic, sometimes even frightening exploration of political satire and assault.⁷⁹

Adopting the too mild pseudonym “Peter Porcupine” soon after A Bone to Gnaw appeared, Cobbett was more than a formidable foe for Bache. He was an enemy without any American vulnerabilities, a seemingly free agent of invective. Bache instinctively and wisely feared him, only cautiously condemning Porcupine's referral to Washington as “our beloved President” when everyone knew that Cobbett was British. Eventually, the Aurora attacked A Bone to Gnaw as a “scurrilous” attempt to divide France and the United States, and “reconcile” Americans to Great Britain. Cobbett was also reproached for referring to Louis XVI as one of the “best of men” while speaking of the common people of America in demeaning terms.⁸⁰ But neither in this instance nor later did Bache show much enthusiasm for taking on Cobbett with energy and determination.

The domestic events of 1794, following the kindled excitement for France in 1793, forced Bache and his supporters to evaluate the limits of popular sovereignty. The Democratic Societies had seemed to represent a solution to the problem of informing and shaping popular opinion. But by late 1794 it was clear that they would not last as permanent engines of opinion. The Whiskey Rebellion had not only contributed to the Societies' downfall; it had also demonstrated to radicals like Bache that the line between peaceful protest and extralegal action was a fine one, a line difficult to draw and stay behind.

Nevertheless, the tenor of Bache's newspaper suggested that not all was lost as the Democratic Societies faded as vehicles of democratic action. Bache found within the Societies a new comradeship, a coterie of political activists with whom he would share all of his future partisan battles. More than that, he found a constituency for democracy. That constituency was made up of mechanics and artisans, not the degraded lower classes that Bache had seen in France, but a decent class who mirrored Franklin's vision of dignified labor and industry. Not yet politically alienated and still anticipating the possible fruits, both civic and economic, of a new democratic age, these men represented a community that would remain the object of Bache's radical republicanism in the years to come.

By late 1794 and early 1795, events had momentarily limited available areas of political action for Bache and his friends. Elections gave some sense of promise, but the gap between elections still had to be filled. It was increasingly filled by Bache through several editorial tactics: making invidious comparisons between England and France, condemning the growth of executive administrative powers, linking Hamiltonian fiscal policy with a conspiracy to subject America anew to British leadership, characterizing individual Federalists as enemies of the people and Federalist behavior as aristocratic, and attacking Federalist press opponents as founders and perpetrators of a minority faction, not a majority party. As a day-to-day journalist, Bache found that his task was to piece together fragmentary arguments and evidence, to make a whole cloth out of separate issues. He did not and could not know until the summer of 1795 that the Jay Treaty would provide that whole cloth so dramatically.

Notes

1. For more on this aspect of Anglo-American relations see Chapter 9.

2. “Corres.,” General Advertiser, Feb. 5, 1794. For Bache's views see Chapter 6. Only a few of Bache's correspondents espoused a simple agrarian economy. Jacob E. Cooke, Tench Coxe and the Early Republic (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1978) is an excellent work that first demonstrated the unflagging commitment of one Jeffersonian to liberal economic policy; John R. Nelson, Liberty and Property: Political Economy and Policymaking in the New Nation, 1789-1812 (Baltimore, 1988) extends the liberal argument and shows leading Jeffersonians, especially Albert Gallatin, to be firm friends of commerce and manufacturing. By contrast, promoters of a classical republican paradigm deny many of these liberal tendencies and see in Jeffersonian opposition to Hamilton's particular policies the continuing thread of antique, backward looking republicanism. For this latter view, see especially Lance Banning, “Jeffersonian Ideology and the French Revolution: A Question of Liberticide at Home,” Studies in Burke and His Time, XVII (1976), 5-26; and Lance Banning, The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology (Ithaca, N. Y., 1978), esp. 179, 187n. For Bache the French Revolution always remained primary, and the attack on Hamilton's policies looked forward toward a radical democratic future, not backward at seventeenth- or eighteenth-century oppositionist thought.

   Forrest McDonald, an unapologetic neo-Hamiltonian, claims that Hamilton sought a hierarchical society based on economic class as well as a society whose political habits and social orientations would be formed for all time through the “monetization” of American society. Although saluting this economic realism, McDonald believes Hamilton kept the British economic connection only as a temporary, rather than as a permanent, solution to America's “monetization.” See Forrest McDonald, Alexander Hamilton: A Biography (New York, 1979), 121-22, 135, 144, 161.

3. See respectively “Corres.,” Gen'l. Adv., Apr. 7 (“corres.”), 17 (“corres.”), 1794. For other variations on these themes see ibid., Feb. 5 (“corres.”), Mar. 24 (“corres.”), Apr. 3 (“An American Sans-Culottes”), 7 (“corres.”), 17 (“corres.”), May 27 (“corres.”), July 17 (ed. from a Boston paper), 1794; Feb. 9, 1795.

4. On the securities tax and Hamilton see John C. Miller, Alexander Hamilton: Portrait in Paradox (New York, 1959), 403-404. Advertiser responses are in Gen'l. Adv., May 7 (“corres.”), 8 (“corres.”), 9 (“corres.”), 17 (“Warren”), 24 (letter), June 12 (“corres.”), 13 (“corres.”), 16 (“corres.”), 1794. On paper money see ibid., Feb. 13 (“Honest Industry”), 14 (“Paper Credit”), 1794. On the Yazoo fraud see ibid., Jan. 27 (“Caveto”), 28 (“Truth”), Feb. 16 (letter), 16 (“A Father” from the Amer. Daily Adv.), 21 (ed. from Gaz. of U. S.), Mar. 30 (“corres.”), 1795. And on salaries of public servants see ibid., Jan. 31 (“corres.”), May 21 (“corres.”), June 11 (letter), 12, 16 (“corres.”), 17, 19 (two “corres.”), July 31, 1794; Jan. 20 (letter), 24 (“A Citizen” and a letter), Feb. 13 (“A Lancaster Farmer”), Mar. 27 (“corres.”), Apr. 2 (“corres.”), 1795.

5. The history and historiography presented here are discussed at length in Eugene Perry Link, Democratic-Republican Societies, 1790-1800 (New York, 1942); William Miller, “The Democratic Societies and the Whiskey Insurrection,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LXII (1935), 224-49; and Philip S. Foner, ed. and intro., The Democratic-Republican Societies, 1790-1800: A Documentary Sourcebook of Constitutions, Declarations, Addresses, Resolutions and Toasts (Westport, Conn., 1976), ix-xi, 3-51. On the Societies as a “way-station” see Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (New York, 1984), 71.

6. Gen'l. Adv., Apr. 15 (repr. from Nat'l. Gaz.), July 13, 1793.

7. On Bache's many involvements see Minutes of the Democratic Society of Pennsylvania, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 27, 28, 38, 40, 68-76, 100-101, 116-17, 122, 125-26, cited hereafter as HSP. For Rittenhouse's refusal see David Rittenhouse to Mr. Bache, Jan. 10, 1794, Genealogical Notes of the Franklin Family, HSP, 23.

8. Gazette of U. S., June 25, 1794. The political activities of Dallas, Leib, Logan, and Du Ponceau and the environment in which they practiced politics are traced generally in Harry M. Tinkcom, The Republicans and Federalists in Pennsylvania, 1790-1801 (Harrisburg, Pa., 1950); and Richard G. Miller, Philadelphia, The Federalist City: A Study of Urban Politics, 1789-1801 (New York, 1976). See also Kim T. Phillips, “William Duane, Philadelphia's Democratic Republicans, and the Origins of Modern Politics,” PMHB, CI (1977), 365-87; Raymond Walters, Jr., Alexander James Dallas: Lawyer, Politician, Financier, 1759-1817 (Philadelphia, 1943. Cited here, New York, 1969), 3-79; “Dr. Michael Leib,” Dictionary of American Biography, X, 149-50; Frederick B. Tolles, George Logan of Philadelphia (New York, 1953), especially 105-204; and “Pierre Étienne Du Ponceau,” DAB, III, 525-26, who is wrongly characterized as having “never evinced any interest in politics, local or national, and passed a somewhat sequestered life.”

9. J. Adams to His Wife, Jan. 4, 1795, Charles Francis Adams, ed., Letters of John Adams Addressed to His Wife (Boston, 1841), II, 171. On Adams's moderate views see Gilbert Chinard, Honest John Adams (Boston, 1933), 250. For examples of the public Federalist argument see “Corres.” Gaz. of U. S., Dec. 14, 1793; Feb. 22 (“corres.”), Apr. 4 (letter), 1794; and American Minerva, May 27, June 5, 1794.

10. Minutes of the Democratic Society of Pennsylvania, HSP, 22, 103-104.

11. G. Washington to the Sec. of State, Apr. 11, 1794, John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington (Washington, D. C., 1931-1944), XXXIII, 321, hereafter cited as Fitzpatrick, ed., Writings of Washington. For other Federalist conspiracy views see G. Washington to Burges Ball, Sept. 25, 1794, ibid., 506-507; and O. Wolcott, Jr. to O. Wolcott, Sr., Apr. 14, 1794, George Gibbs, ed., Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and Adams (New York, 1846; cited here, N. Y., 1971), I, 133-34, cited hereafter as Gibbs, ed., Wolcott Papers.

12. Gen'l. Adv., Jan. 17 (“corres.”), 18 (“corres.”), 20 (“corres.”), 1794.

13. “L. E.,” Gaz. of U. S., Apr. 19, 1794; and Gen'l. Adv., Apr. 16 (three “corres.”), 17 (“corres.”), May 5 (“corres.”), 12, 16, (two “corres.”), 22 (“corres.”), June 26, Aug. 4 (“A Democrat”), 1794.

14. For Bache's early defense of the excise see ibid., Jan. 27, 28, 1791. For later editorials in the same vein see ibid., Feb. 15 (“corres.”), Aug. 19, Nov. 16, 28, 1791. The best analytic work on the excise and Whiskey Rebellion is Thomas P. Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution (New York, 1986). On the early period of the excise protest see ibid., 3-170; and Leland D. Baldwin, Whiskey Rebels: The Story of a Frontier Uprising (Pittsburgh, 1939), 56-75. For other relevant sources for this discussion see James Roger Sharp, “The Whiskey Rebellion and the Question of Representation,” in Steven R. Boyd, ed., The Whiskey Rebellion: Past and Present Perspectives (Westport, Conn., 1985); and William D. Barber, “Among the Most ‘Techy Articles of Civil Police’: Federal Taxation and the Adoption of the Whiskey Excise,” William and Mary Quarterly, XXV (1968), 58-84.

15. For the Germantown protest and Bache's remarks see Gen'l. Adv., July 11, 1791. For rebuttals against Bache's stand see ibid., July 16 (“corres.”), 19 (“A Farmer”), 1791.

16. Ibid., Aug. 3, 1791.

17. Ibid., Aug. 19 (“A Lover of Peace”), 31 (letter), Sept. 5, 20, 1791. On the progress of protest see Slaughter, Whiskey Rebellion, 109-24; and Baldwin, Whiskey Rebels, 76-85.

18. Gen'l. Adv., Jan. 2, 16, 1792. For other editorials defending the excise see Gen'l. Adv., Sept. 15, 28 (“corres.”), Nov. 1, 10 (“A Friend of Good Laws,” from the Fayettesville Gaz.), Nov. 13 (from the Conn. Courant), 1792. See the Gaz. of U. S., and the Columbian Centinel for Sept.-Oct., 1792, for comparisons to Bache.

19. See Washington's Proclamation in James D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (New York, 1897), I, 116-17. On Bache's comment see Gen'l. Adv., Sept. 1, 1792. The original “Sidney” letters appeared in the Nat'l. Gaz., Apr. 5-May 24, 1792. Bache carried most of them simultaneously. See Gen'l. Adv., Apr. 16, 24, 26, 28, 30, May 2, 1792. On the Pittsburgh meeting see Baldwin, Whiskey Rebels, 86; and Slaughter, Whiskey Rebellion, 115-16.

20. On this stage of the rebellion see Baldwin, Whiskey Rebels, 76-182; and Slaughter, Whiskey Rebellion, 175-189. The “bluff” of the summonses and the “unthinking” rebellion are quotations from ibid., 182 and 181 respectively.

21. Gen'l. Adv., July 26, 1794.

22. On the “Country-Court” issue and Logan's vehement hatred of any excise see Slaughter, Whiskey Rebellion, 125-42, 131. On the Revenue Act of 1794 see Roland M. Baumann, “Philadelphia's Manufacturers and the Excise Tax of 1794: The Forging of the Jeffersonian Coalition,” in Boyd, Whiskey Rebellion, 135-64.

23. Gen'l. Adv., July 26, 29, 1794. The July 26 editorial also contained criticism of the federal administration's efforts to slow town and land development at Presque Isle—efforts which also angered westerners.

24. Ibid., Aug. 1, 2 (Extract and “Excise”), 26 (“corres.”), Sept. 5, 9 (“A Plain Dealer”), 1794.

25. Slaughter, Whiskey Rebellion, 221. For the pacification policy and process see ibid., 190-221; and Baldwin, Whiskey Rebels, 183-258. For examples of the views of Washington, Hamilton, and the staunch Federalists see G. Washington to Henry Lee, Aug. 26, 1794, Fitzpatrick, ed., Writings of Washington, XXXIII, 475-76; Alex. Hamilton to R. King, Oct. 30, 1794, Charles R. King, ed., The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King (New York, 1894-1900. Cited here, N. Y., 1971), I, 575; and O. Wolcott, Jr. to O. Wolcott, Sr., Aug. 16, 1794, Gibbs, ed., Wolcott Papers, I, 157.

26. The two editorials quoted are respectively Gen'l. Adv., Aug. 20 (“corres.”), 25 (letter), 1794. Opposition to force can be seen in ibid., Aug. 16 (“corres.”), 18 (“Conservator”), 20 (“corres.”), 25 (letter), 1794. One favored the use of the “sword,” ibid., Aug. 12 (letter), 1794.

27. Ibid., Aug. 21, Sept. 5, 6, 8, 1794.

28. Ibid., Sept. 9, 1794.

29. Ibid., Sept. 10, 11, 1794. The Gazette cynically suspected Bache of taunting the government to act precipitously so that he could later attack the perpetrators of excessive force. See “Corres.” Gaz. of U. S., Sept. 15, 1794.

30. Gen'l. Adv., Sept. 4 (“An Old Soldier”), 15 (Bache and “corres.”), 16 (Bache and “corres.”), 1794.

31. Ibid., Sept. 4 (“An Old Soldier”), 15 (two “corres.”), 16 (“A Militia Man”), Oct. 7, (“A Citizen”), Nov. 24 (letter), 1794.

32. Ibid., Sept. 26. In November, using hindsight, a correspondent complained of the excessively large militia sent out to put down a small band of rebels. Ibid., Nov. 10, 1794.

33. Ibid., Sept. 27 (Bache and “corres.”), 29 (“corres.”), Oct. 7 (“corres.”), 1794. One correspondent defended Mifflin's order. “No Friend of the Insurgents,” ibid., Oct. 20, 1794.

34. Ibid., Oct. 3, 11 (“corres.”), 15, 1794. G. Washington to the Sec. of State, Oct. 16, 1794, Fitzpatrick, ed., Writings of Washington, XXXIV, 2-3.

35. The central editorial is Gen'l. Adv., Nov. 3, 1794. Variations on this theme are included in ibid., Nov. 5, 6, 10, 14, 1794.

36. G. Washington to the Sec. of the Treasury, Nov. 5, 1794, Fitzpatrick, ed., Writings of Washington, XXXIV, 20; Gaz. of U. S., Nov. 6 (“A Citizen and True Friend to the United States”), 10 (two “corres.”), and 18 (“Peter Penitent”), 1794; and Am. Minerva, Nov. 7, 1794.

37. Aurora, Jan. 3 (“corres.”), 13, 15 (letter and “Marcus”), 16 (three eds.), 18, 20 (“corres.” and Bache), 21 (Bache and “corres.”), 22 (“corres.”), 24, 29 (two eds.), 30, Feb. 4 (“corres.”), 13, 18 (letter and Bache), 1795. On the legislative episode see Baldwin, Whiskey Rebels, 262; and Tinkcom, Republicans and Federalists in Pennsylvania, 109-10.

38. Minutes of the Democratic Society of Pennsylvania, HSP, 127, 130-31, 134-37.

39. Ibid., 141-45. The resolves were carried in the Gen'l. Adv., Sept. 13, 1794. On this issue see Foner, Democratic-Republican Societies, 30.

40. Gen'l. Adv., Aug. 9 (“A Convert”), 12 (“A Democrat” and “Humanitas”), Sept. 12 (“corres.”), 1794. Two writers believed the Democratic Society was partially responsible for the rebellion. Ibid., Aug. 21 (“Conservator”), Sept. 22 (letter), 1794.

41. Ibid., Aug. 28, Sept. 8, 1794. For other editorials on a similar theme see ibid., Sept 9, 25, 27, Oct. 20, 1794.

42. The President's message is in Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents I, 154-60. On Webster see Am. Minerva, Jan. 14, 1795. On Madison's comments see J. Madison to J. Monroe, Dec. 4, 1794, and J. Madison to Thos. Jefferson, Dec. 21, 1794, Gaillard Hunt, ed., The Writings of James Madison (New York, 1906), VI, 22-24, 228, hereafter cited as Hunt, ed., Writings of Madison. For details on the attack on the clubs and the decline of the clubs see John Alexander Carroll and Mary Wells Ashworth, George Washington. First in Peace (New York, 1957), 219-24; Miller, Hamilton, 412-14; Link, Democratic-Republican Societies, 194-206; and Foner, Democratic-Republican Societies, 29-35.

43. Link, Democratic-Republican Societies, 200-206.

44. Aurora, Nov. 29, 1794. See also “L.,” ibid., Dec. 24 and 27, 1794. “Timothy Tinker” continued the charge that members of the Society were politically motivated and tried to press the wishes of a minority on the majority. Ibid., Dec. 29, 1794.

45. Minutes of the Democratic Society of Pennsylvania, HSP, 170-71, 174-84; and Aurora, Dec. 22, 1794.

46. On the attack on the French societies by Fenno and Webster see Gaz. of U. S., Jan. 12 (“corres.”), 15 (“corres.”), 1795; and Am. Minerva, Jan. 14, 1795. On the Aurora's defense see Jan. 9, 14 (“An Enemy to Party Spirit”), Mar. 2 (“corres.”), 1795.

47. “Germanicus” consisted of thirteen short essays. These essays appeared in the Aurora only on Jan. 21, 24, 29, 1795. Bache's public announcement to “Germanicus” regarding publication was carried on Jan. 24, 1795. On Randolph and these letters see John J. Reardon, Edmund Randolph: A Biography (New York, 1975), 280.

48. Aurora, Jan. 26 (letter), 31 (“A Friend to Truth”), Feb. 4 (letter), 7 (“Zenas”), 14 (“Claudius”), 1795.

49. Ibid., Jan. 17, 22, 23, 29, 31, Feb. 2, 1795. For Fenno's comments see Gaz. of U. S., Jan. 27, 1795. Aurora comparisons of pro- and anti-administration societies are in Aurora, Jan. 27 (Bache and “corres.”), 30 (two eds.), Feb. 24, Mar. 19 (ed. from Norfolk Herald), 1795. On the “Witch of Endor” charge and condemnation of Webster see ibid., Jan. 29, 31, Feb. 2, 1795.

50. James Monroe to (?), Apr. 23, 1794, in the Simon Gratz Collection, HSP.

51. On Dexter see Gen'l. Adv., Jan. 1 (“Gracchus”), Mar. 4, 14, 1794. Federalist publicists denied Bache's accuracy. See Letter, Col. Cent., Mar. 26, 1794; and “Corres.,” Gaz. of U. S., Apr. 17, 1794. Bache's insistence on his accuracy is in Gen'l. Adv., Apr. 4, 25, 1794. On New England congressmen in general see ibid., May 6 (“corres.”), 6, 19 (two “corres.”), Oct. 28, 1794; Mar. 10 (“A.B.”), 1795. See also Gaz. of U. S., May 8 (“corres.”), 1794.

52. J. Adams to His Wife, Jan. 2, 1794, Adams, Letters of John Adams, II, 134.

53. “Corres.,” Gen'l. Adv., Feb. 5, 1794. See also ibid., Feb. 14 (“corres.”), 21 (“A Militia Man”), 1794. For 1795 see Aurora, Feb. 18 (“A Courtier”), 21 (“An Officer”), 27, 1795.

54. Ibid., Feb. 22, 25, Mar. 14, 1794.

55. F. Ames to Chris. Gore, Feb. 27, 1795, Seth Ames, ed., Works of Fisher Ames (Boston, 1854. Cited here, N. Y., 1969), I, 167-68. See also F. Ames to Theo. Dwight, Feb. 24, 1795, ibid., 168-69.

56. Gen'l. Adv., Feb. 28 (“corres.”), May 9 (“corres.”), 1794.

57. “Gracchus,” ibid., Feb. 10, 1794. See also ibid., Mar. 5 (“corres.”), 7 (“corres.”), 1794.

58. Ibid., Mar. 31, 1794. On the Minerva incident see also, “Corres.,” ibid., June 2, 1794. The Minerva writer denied that he was a monarchist. Letter, Am. Minerva, Apr. 2, 1794. On “An Unfeigned Democrat,” see ibid., June 25, 1794.

59. “Franklin,” Gen'l. Adv., Aug. 22, 1794. For Bache see ibid., Sept. 27, 1794. Another correspondent charged the public with apathy. “Corres.,” ibid., Oct. 7, 1794. Joseph Charles, The Origins of the American Party System (New York, 1956), has found a sudden emergence of party politics in Congress in 1794 with the introduction of Madison's resolutions. Mary Ryan, “Party Formation in the United States Congress, 1789-1796: A Quantitative Analysis,” WMQ, XXVIII (1971), 539, has found an increase in partisanship in the Senate beginning only in December 1794 and in the House after the Whiskey Rebellion.

60. Roland M. Baumann, “John Swanwick: Spokesman for ‘Merchant-Republicans’ in Philadelphia, 1790-1798,” PMHB, XCVII (1973), 131-82, convincingly promotes Alfred Young's thesis on the liberal, mercantile character of many 1790s Jeffersonian Republicans.

61. Gaz. of U. S., Oct. 6, 1794.

62. Gen'l. Adv., Oct. 11, 1794. One correspondent noted, however, that even with the absence of most mechanics, Swanwick nearly won the nomination. “Corres.” ibid., Oct. 14, 1794. On the Swanwick-Fitzsimmons election as a whole see Tinkcom, Republicans and Federalists in Pennsylvania, 138-42. Miller, Philadelphia, The Federalist City, 62-68, sees the Swanwick election as the break-through in creating an opposition party in Philadelphia. William Miller, “First Fruits of Republican Organization: Political Aspects of the Congressional Election of 1794,” PMHB, LXIII (1939), 118-43, surveys the first significant, partisan Congressional election more broadly.

63. Gen'l. Adv., Nov. 1 (“corres.” and Bache), 6, 1794.

64. On the Ames-Jarvis race see ibid., Nov. 11, 22 (“A Scrap for the Aurora”), 25 (ed. from Boston), 28 (two eds. from Boston), 1794. For editorials on the Varnum-Dexter election race see ibid., Jan. 3, Apr. 8, 14, 30 (ed. from Boston), 1795. For Bache's comment on republicanism see ibid., Apr. 14, 1795. The close contest for Massachusetts is discussed in Paul Goodman, The Democratic-Republicans of Massachusetts: Politics in a Young Republic (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), 61-62. Fisher Ames said that prospects of Republican success gave him the “hypo.” See F. Ames to Theo. Dwight, Dec. 27, 1794, Ames, ed., Works, I, 158.

65. Aurora, Feb. 10, Apr. 14, 1795.

66. Ibid., Feb. 13, 1794. Webster, in a satirical retort, hinted that Bache's editorial was in bad taste. Amer. Minerva, Feb. 15, 1794.

67. “A Specimen of a New Dictionary,” Gen'l. Adv., Sept. 27, 1794. Unlike Fenno, Bache seldom used the more antique form of poetic satire. For an exception see “Samuel Sweetbriar's Chaplet,” Aurora, Mar. 13, 1795.

68. Ibid., Mar. 6 (letter), May 8 (“A Definition of Parties” and Bache), and June 13, 1794.

69. Amer. Minerva, Dec. 20, 1794.

70. “Benedict Arnold,” Aurora, Jan. 6, 1795. Another, seconding “Arnold,” labeled the Federalists the new anti-federalists since they aimed at destroying the Constitution. “Corres.” ibid., Jan. 13, 1795. See also “Johnny's Club,” ibid., Jan. 14, 1795.

71. Ibid., Feb. 11, 1795. Bache had previously attacked Hamilton for arrogance, aggressiveness, secrecy, and usurpation of governmental powers. See ibid., Jan. 23, 1795.

72. “Duff,” ibid., Mar. 3, 1795.

73. Ibid., Feb. 7 (“corres.”), 24 (two “corres.”), 1794.

74. Gaz. of U. S., Apr. 25, May 2 (“B.”), 1794; and Gen'l. Adv., Apr. 29, May 6, June 2, 1794.

75. Gaz. of U. S., June 3 (letter), Nov. 8 (“corres.”), 1794; Feb. 12 (“corres.”), 13 (“A Republican”), 17 (“corres.”), 1795. On being in foreign pay see especially ibid., May 9 (“B.”), Nov. 6 (“corres.”), 1794.

76. “Shakespeare,” ibid., Nov. 25, 1794.

77. Gen'l. Adv., May 8, June 3, 7 (letter), 18 (“corres.”), July 30, Oct. 10, Nov. 8 (two “corres.”), 9 (“corres.”), 10 (“E.”), 12 (letter), 15 (“corres.”), 16 (“Fellow Citizens”), 17 (“Warren”), 19, 28, 1794; Feb. 12, 26 (letter), 28, 1795. On the “Laureat” editorial see “Corres.,” ibid., Jan. 17, 1795.

78. William Cobbett, A Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats (Philadelphia, 1795), 8-9.

79. This composite biographic portrait of Cobbett is drawn from G. D. H. Cole, The Life of William Cobbett (London, 1924), 51-59; William Reitzel, “William Cobbett and Philadelphia Journalism, 1794-1800,” PMHB, LIX (1935), 223-35; Norman Victor Blantz, “Editors and Issues: The Party Press in Philadelphia, 1789-1801,” (unpub. Ph.D. diss., Pennsylvania State Univ., 1974), 44-53; Karen K. List, “William Cobbett in Philadelphia, 1794-1799,” Jour. Hist., V (1978), 80-83; Karen K. List, “The Role of William Cobbett in Philadelphia's Party Press, 1794-1799,” (unpub. Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, 1980); George Spater, William Cobbett: The Poor Man's Friend (Cambridge, 1982), I, 39-75; and Daniel Green, Great Cobbett: The Noblest Agitator (London, 1983), 107-67.

80. On Cobbett and Washington see Aurora, Jan. 20 (“corres.”), 28 (“Marrow”), 1795. “A Constant Reader, “Gaz. of U. S., Jan. 21, 1795, ridiculed Bache's timidity. On A Bone to Gnaw see Aurora, Jan. 24, 29 (“corres.”), 1795.